MIRIS, Nokia Develop Renewable Urban Data Centers

Norwegian real estate developer MIRIS will utilize Nokia’s AirFrame Open Edge data center technology for its smart city projects in business parks and residential areas.

MIRIS is planning to build 20 data centers in urban locations across Finland. Nokia’s AirFrame technology improves data center density and makes it simpler for employees to monitor and fix rack issues. It is also optimized for the future of the internet, like connected vehicles, gaming and massive video applications.

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Nokia will supply the edge compute services for the data center, while MIRIS will build the warehouses.

“In Nokia, MIRIS has an industrial partner with a Nordic brand and global reach that can provide a complete data center solution, including operations, leaving us free to focus on concept development, sales and deployment,” said MIRIS CEO, Jan Gunnar Mathisen.

Data centers require large amounts of electricity and generate a lot of heat. AirFrame is one of growing list of solutions that make the warehouses more environmentally friendly. MIRIS plans to use the excess heat to power local homes and businesses.

Several tech companies have also started buying electricity from only renewable sources or have made plans to run data centers strictly off their own supply. Data centers account for five percent of the world’s power usage, according to some statistics, so re-utilizing the energy and making sure it comes from renewable sources is important.

“In this fast-growing edge data center market, we are pleased to work with MIRIS on such an innovative approach that delivers desirable Smart City and IoT applications while also helping to reduce the environmental impact of these centers globally,” said Jerome Julien, Head of Enterprise Partners at Nokia.